tagged w/ Mini
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New way to work
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For the first time I’ve discovered a new way to work in the beginning of distant 2004 year. Thenadays I’ve been busy selling corporate contracts for one of the biggest mobile operator, and started thinking about starting my own, independent activity. I’ve already had a passing experience with elance.com – we searched for writers and native translators there for small one-time projects for our foreign guests. But at that time I wanted to work professionally by myself. I had a deep understanding of internet from inside out. I’ve earned second and then first place in International student advertisement festival, in nomination of “Internet advertisement”. Few years earlier, I’ve managed to win several open webdesign tenders in Moscow. But I’ve quit this field and now felt enough strengths and will to get back to it.
I was fascinated and captivated by internet and the freedom it gives, when you learn how to earn enough with it. I had friends who enjoyed good profits selling advertisement traffic online. But I wanted to do what I did best – create advertisement strategies, write selling texts and do designs. In a word – I was willing to create. Russian local internet was only starting to develop, but the most of it was quite exaggerated and farfetched. At the same time, all the English-speaking interned was developing in leaps and bounds, and all the processes in it were quite transparent to me. I knew English rather well, so I’ve signed up with Elance – perhaps, the only huge international freelance resource at that time – and started to study demand there.
Browsing through clients’ projects I’ve discovered that it’s not enough just to create website anymore. Many of them demanded also an automated content management system (CMS) as well. These days there were not many convenient ready-to-use solutions, and an idea to create a reproducible system, which I could sell separately from development, as a stand-alone product, and earn extra profit. I started to study abilities of selling software products over internet, and stumbled upon shareware – a software selling concept, when you can use it free during a limited time or with limited functionality. As I’ve noticed, it was quite developed sector of the software market, with own processing systems, sharpened specifically for software sellers, with huge amount of online software catalogues, specialized magazines, distributors, communities, conferences… Generally, by this concept products were developed for OS Windows and Mac. But server-side applications were not sold using this “shareware” concept.
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First steps
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I knew several programmers who didn’t mind to go “free sailing” with me. I’ve sketched a design statement, based on studies hundreds of clients’ project descriptions, published on Elance. Then I’ve developed a user-friendly interface design for the control panel. I wanted to create a market nicher content management system, highly tailored to manage huge arrays of graphical files. In the beginning, it was planned as an additional module, but it turned out that the whole product and its client base was all around this ideology. While product was in the development phase, I’ve been already inviting clients for the inexistent product. But it was obvious, that the majority of tenders were won by western or even Indian companies.
Russian developers were trusted unwillingly, or with very huge discount and with no advance payment. This trend was quite obscure to me, but all I could do was to accept this reality. Since I’ve had in my profile – Russia, Moscow – it was clear to me, that in order to get into the new level, I need full presence in Western region. Orders were still coming, and with the first money (via middlemen over internet) I’ve ordered an offshore LLC company kit in state Delaware, USA, with a nominal director and audit support for one year, corporate account in an American bank, with VISA card attached to the account, and online access through internet bank. At the same time, I’ve found a possibility to order American Toll-Free number starting with code 800 – free of charge for all callers from USA/Canada. Every call to this number was redirected to my personal mobile phone, even though there were noticeable delays – small lag during the conversation and plainly heard echo of my own voice. Simultaneously, I’ve registered a .com domain name and published all the information regarding the product and services completely in plain English. New postal address and a toll-free phone number were completing the full picture. Now I was a respectful owner of an American business, with certificate of good standing, and which was working by classic offshore scheme. It was an unbelievable pleasure of further company operation and communication to clients. Business started to grow appreciably, and I could set world market price for our production and services we were offering. We’ve been working from now on practically with full prepayment. And I was finding clients not only via Elance. I started to develop very own partnership network of former-competitors – design studios, independent programmers, photographers’ studios, and many others, whose clients might be interested in our product. I was in on the ground floor of the galloping development and growth of my own business. I was filled with that non-transferable feeling of strong belief in my own success.
All that I contrived to do only thanks to a very rigorous discipline. I’ve cultivated a fixed schedule of awakening and lights-out time. I was going to swimming pool by schedule, in order to allow my organism and my head to sweat my guts out, sitting in the armchair during 14 hours running, every day and practically with no day offs. My meals budget didn’t exceed 150 dollars a month – it was specific diet composed of chicken meat, cereal, cottage cheese and honey. It was very light nourishment and rich of carbohydrates. Except this, I didn’t have any other spending – except communications and internet. I lived extremely ascetic life, and couldn’t even dream of private life. I simply didn’t have time on that. I was “married’ on my product and on the idea to live free life, and move to where I wanted to, as long as I have fast internet connection. I was going to there, putting my soul and all the funds I was earning into the development of the product, paying salaries to my team, and investing in creation of new modules for the product via freelancers. My operation with Elance now became two-sided – not just to search for the interesting projects and clients, Elance was used also as a great source of talents.
(10 000 characters limit here)
Read full story in my blogs:
http://cooperovich.livejournal.com/
http://cooperovich.blogspot.com/
http://cooperovich.wordpress.com/
http://cooperovich.typepad.com/
http://www.cooperovich.com/ is coming soon!---------------------
New way to work
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For the first time... more
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